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Quals, short for Qualitative Assessment, is an assessment that every student in Chemistry has to take at the end of the semester.

Students either look forward to it, or absolutely dread it.

“It was pretty easy for me because I understood it,” sophomore Noah Pearson said. “The key is to go with the flow of things and work hard. The hardest part was trying not to mess everything up because even the slightest mistakes can throw the whole experiment off.”

The main idea of Quals is to apply what you have learned in the semester in order to find multiple unknown substances.

“I feel that Quals are both stressful and fun at the same time,” sophomore Lindsay Nelson said. “ It’s kind of fun because it’s a five day lab and you do nothing else, but it’s stressful since it’s worth 10% of your grade.”

There were some students who liked Quals, as they felt it tested their understanding of concepts learned throughout the semester. Some, however, faced a lot of difficulties.

“I thought Quals was difficult because I didn’t read the instructions the first time and my Qual wasn’t correct,” sophomore Maci Lueck said. “Once Mrs. Ingram told me it was wrong, I went back, re-read the instructions, and was able to fix my mistake

Former Chemistry students recall the stressful week.

“I didn’t like Quals as much as I thought I was going to,” junior Benjamin Copeland said. “It was a good assessment to be a part and learn about I just didn’t like all the work.”

In the end, all that was left for them to do was “Quals Test,” a summary of what was learned during the experiment and a few questions about their semester in Chemistry.